Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Performance Analysis

If you are one of those people that owns more than one gaming system and you have to decide which platform to buy Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning for, Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry is offering another one of their “face-offs”. They conclude that the differences between the console versions are minimal, with the Xbox 360 getting a slight edge, but in the end PC is the way to go:

In conclusion, it’s safe to say that you can buy Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on any of the three major HD gaming platforms and you’re going to be in for a real treat. The experience on console is essentially interchangeable where it truly matters, but if we had to make a choice, it would have to be the Xbox 360 release. While the more minor visuals upgrades such as texture filtering and improved shadows are nice, it’s the motion blur and reduced aliasing that makes it the marginally better buy.

While we feel that the blur incurred by the post-process anti-aliasing is a bit heavy, it does at least fit in with the overall aesthetic of the game. The occasional stuttering during combat definitely feels more pronounced on the Xbox, but the bottom line is that performance drops are relatively rare on either console so we’re left with the conclusion that the 360 game looks and moves better for most of the time.

But clearly it’s the PC version that’s the one to get, even if you have a relatively modest gamers’ rig – it looks better, it plays better, it just feels right. A mid-range graphics card and quad-core CPU is all you need to effortlessly power past the console versions, and even if you play the game at 720p – a low level setting by PC standards – the improvement is still immediately apparent in comparison to the Xbox 360 or PS3 experience. Scale up beyond that and it’s as though the rich detail of the game is fully unlocked, and you’re enjoying Kingdoms of Amalur at the height of its potential.